China’s First Bitcoin Exchange ‘BTCC’ Gets a Makeover

Bobby Lee co-founded Bitcoin exchange BTCC, formerly known as BTCChina, in 2011. It had a successful run in China, until September 2017, when the exchange stopped Chinese Yuan trading. BTCC moved to Hong Kong and launched BTCC Dax in June 2017 – however, it was also suspended later in December. Finally, it was announced in January 2018 that the exchange was being acquired by Hong Kong based blockchain investment fund. Last week, news was circulating that BTCC was going to sell 49% of its equity in BTCC Pool Limited.

Now, Coindesk has reported that the exchange has relaunched itself with a few major changes. BTCC will now issue its own tokens “in the next couple of months”. Following other crypto projects, users will receive points for completing tasks such as registering, trading and verifying their identities. These points will have a fixed limit and users will be able to convert them into BTCC tokens.

Currently, customers can trade BTC/USD, ETH/USD, BCH/USD and LTC/USD pairs. However, BTCC plans to add more cryptocurrencies, especially ERC-20 based tokens. Coindesk added that the exchange’s new system was similar to “trans-fee mining”, according to which users are paid in platform tokens to cover transaction fees.

Aaron Choi, VP of International Business, said, “The (trans-fee mining) model draws a lot of attention at the moment. … But there’s still a business risk so our management is reviewing this model, how it can be sustained in a long term. So giving away points for trading that can be converted into our token in the future is what we think makes sense for now.”

With regards to recent hacking incidents on crypto exchanges, BTCC told CCN that they will use cold storage to eliminate risks in the future. The exchange added that it took security of its users extremely seriously and can proudly state that they have never been “compromised”.